# Date: 21 December 1915

3G6
of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers' Party. At the beginning of the twentieth century he departed from internationalist positions and shifted to the positions of extreme opportunism. During the imperialist world war — a social-chauvinist of Germanophile orientation. V. I. Lenin repeatedly and sharply criticized Troelstra's opportunistic policy, calling him an example of a "venal, opportunistic leader serving the bourgeoisie and deceiving the workers" (Complete Works, vol. 39, p. 193).

13 R. Kuyper — Dutch social-democrat.

14 Herman Gorter — Dutch left social-democrat, poet and publicist. During the years of the imperialist world war — an internationalist, supporter of the Zimmerwald Left. In 1918-1921 he was a member of the Communist Party of Holland and participated in the work of the Comintern; he held an ultraleft, sectarian position. In 1921 he left the communist party and subsequently withdrew from active political activity.

15 Charles Naine — one of the leaders of the Social-Democratic Party of Switzerland. From the beginning of the imperialist world war he participated in the Zimmerwald Conference, was a member of the International Socialist Commission. In 1917 he became a centrist, and soon shifted completely to the side of the right wing of Swiss social-democracy.

ANNOTATIONS ON THE "DECLARATION 
OF THE POLISH DELEGATION AT THE INTERNATIONAL 
SOCIALIST CONFERENCE 
IN ZIMMERWALD"1

[Between 30 November and 21 December 1915]

[98] ... the conscious revolutionary Polish proletariat set itself in opposition to the coalition of Polish ruling classes, who on both sides of the line of battle, obedient to their class interests and in accordance with their imperialist hopes and aspirations, support the warring governments, justifying, *for Poles!* a doubly fratricidal war as supposedly serving Polish aims.

At the present moment the Polish lands, transformed into one gigantic cemetery, into one bloody wasteland, are directly threatened by new annexationist operations and partition schemes.

... [text partially illegible], depriving the Polish people, regard Polish territories as a pledge in the forthcoming game of compensations, which either must be divided among the central monarchies,^ or extracted anew by Russian tsarism. In this there is manifested with particular crudeness the essence of the policy of capitalist governments, which, sending the popular masses to slaughter, at the same time arbitrarily determine the fates of entire peoples...

Polish social-democracy solemnly and decisively protests against the redrawing and partition into pieces of an entire country...

[99] Polish socialist workers learned with deep bitterness that the majority of socialists both in the countries of the Triple Entente and in the central monarchies succumbed to the influence of war hypnosis — some, following the command of the imperialists, actively supported the rehabilitation of tsarism, others entrusted the Habsburgs2 and Hohenzollerns with the task of liberating oppressed peoples.

At the moment when the German government is preparing to dispose of Polish territories as a conquered colony, the corresponding intention of the chancellor, barely concealed in his declaration, encountered no resistance whatever from German social-democracy.

NB |||| German social-nationalists, who before the war fought against Polish-Galician social-patriotic instigators of war, now patronize the senseless and criminal military utopias of the latter, in order thereby to justify the support which they themselves render to their governments.

The present war, which has revealed the incapacity of capitalism to adapt international relations to the demands of world economy, opens an era of military conflicts and social upheavals. The revolutionary struggle of the proletariat, which under these conditions must flare up with spontaneous force on an international scale, will be directed against the very foundations of the capitalist system, will unfold into a struggle for socialism.

Polish social-democracy expresses the conviction that only the participation in this impending struggle of the revolutionary international proletariat, participation in a struggle which will shatter the chains of national oppression and destroy all forms of foreign domination,

NB will ensure for the Polish people as well the possibility of comprehensive free development as an equal member in the union of peoples.

1 The "Declaration of the Polish delegation at the international socialist conference in Zimmerwald" was published in bulletin no. 2 of the International Socialist Commission ("Internationale sozialistische Kommission zu Bern. Bulletin") of 27 November 1915. After reading the declaration, V. I. Lenin made numerous annotations and remarks in the text and in the margins of the bulletin, and at the end of it wrote that the document contained "five propositions in the guise (or rather. — Ed.) of political postulates," and then enumerated them (see Lenin Collection XVII, pp. 290-297).

After setting forth these propositions in his theses "Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination," Lenin wrote: "In their essence these propositions do not differ at all from recognition of the right of nations to self-determination, suffering only from even greater vagueness and indefiniteness in their political formulations than the majority of the programmes and resolutions of the Second International" (Complete Works, vol. 27, p. 265).

The annotations of V. I. Lenin on the declaration published in the present collection were made by him on the Russian translation of this document, published in the collection "The International and War" no. 1 for 1915, issued by...